


Vengeance Keen

by fadagaski



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Imprisonment, Mad Max Secret Santa 2015, injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 17:34:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5549321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadagaski/pseuds/fadagaski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Max and Furiosa are taken prisoner, he'll buy her time in blood and pain in order to spring them free.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vengeance Keen

**Author's Note:**

> For [@inthelapofthemanta](inthelapofthemanta.tumblr.com/). Merry (belated) Christmas!

Max drives with his foot hard on the accelerator. Furiosa is riding shotgun, rifle across her lap and a dozen other guns within easy reach. There are two Free Boys perched on the roof of the ute, and another two on the box trailer they're hauling. The trailer has an old man, three old women, two mothers, a pregnant teenager, four children and a baby inside. 

Furiosa's stomach is tight with tension, her fingers itchy on the trigger of her favourite weapon. Her eyes scope the horizon with raptor intensity. It's dangerous territory for anyone, and they're bumping along with the deadweight of a trailer behind them. A soft target.

The attackers come from the north, in the black time between sunset and moonrise. 

It's a huge raiding party, at least twenty cars churning up the desert. Furiosa fires and fires. Max swerves and fires and fights the awkward bulk of the trailer. Free Boys tumble from their perches, land in broken, bloodied heaps on the road. Max keeps driving, even when the warning light flashes on and the engine chokes and sputters. Furiosa keeps firing until the guns click empty and the bullets are gone and the back two trailer wheels are shredded. The raiders close in, nudge them off road into the sinking sand.

Max kills the engine and gives her a heavy look, head tilting to the back. Furiosa pinches her lips, scans the circle of vehicles surrounding them. Her heart is racing. Her arms ache with the need for violence. Max waits, watches. If she goes out guns blazing, Furiosa knows he'll follow – to whatever end.

Furiosa growls a curse under her breath. Before the raiders reach them, she crawls over the divide to the rear seats and removes her prosthesis, stuffing it into the hidey-hole underneath. Then she wraps a shawl around her shoulders and over her head, slouches in her seat to hide her height. Max meets her eyes in the rearview mirror, something like grim amusement twisting his mouth. 

When the attackers edge up to the windows, they look at Max, look at her, and haul Max out by his hair. 

His swinging fist makes contact, but the fight ends abruptly with a vicious pistol whip to his face. Blood splatters the window where Furiosa sits, grinding her teeth as hatred brews in her chest like battery acid. 

Max is trussed up and stuffed in the trunk of a raider's car. Someone else takes the wheel of the ute. Furiosa eyes the back of his head, his vulnerable neck; there are three guns and a knife within reach that she could use but – it's not just her. It's not just Max. And it's definitely not just this one man. She can wait.

Doesn't stop her from sliding the knife into the waistband of her pants – for later.

A second man hops in the cab, exclaiming in a language Furiosa doesn't know. He holds up a handful of spent bullet casings with an incredulous laugh, turns his head to chortle at Furiosa sitting carefully still in the back seat. He flicks a couple casings at her, grinning stupidly; Furiosa keeps her head turned so he can't see the rage glowing like embers in her eyes. He stops at a word from the driver.

The whole convoy drives off as one, the ute and trailer somewhere in the middle of them all. Furiosa tunes out the grinding sound of wheel rims on the road and the two men jabbering to each other, focuses on memorising the route they take when they branch into the desert. Max is better at landmarks and directions, but he's unconscious and bleeding and out of view: Furiosa will have to do.

The moon hovers a fist-width over the horizon by the time they reach the raider's encampment. They pull into an open space next to a roaring fire – clearly these people don't fear attack from other tribes. Furiosa breathes slow and steady when the ute engine shuts off, bracing herself for whatever might come next. The two raiders climb out. The driver pulls a gun from his pants and aims it directly at Furiosa as he opens the passenger door. She holds up her arms – one whole, one half, and they aren't that far from Citadel but there are enough amputees in the world that she's not exceptional – and slides onto the firm ground. 

“You. Come,” says the driver, waving her to the trailer with his pistol. She goes, slow and steady; better that the trailer people see her first. 

She unbolts the door one-handed, lets it swing open. The women moan in despair to see her at gunpoint. The old man covers his face to hide the tears. 

“It's okay,” Furiosa soothes. She can't quite summon a smile, but she nods as reassuringly as she can. “Come out.” 

The pregnant girl moves first, waddling down the step. She glares daggers at the man holding the gun and Furiosa's heart stops to see the spirit of a woman she knew before. The rest follow, standing in a line next to Furiosa. She wishes she knew their names, but it had been a hurried escape with no time for introductions; she doesn't think they know hers either. 

There's a muffled thumping that draws the attention of everyone. A man – the one who flicked bullet casings at Furiosa in the ute – approaches the back of the car where they tossed Max. He unlocks the trunk, lifts it.

A booted foot lashes out and catches him in the jaw. He pinwheels back and collapses in a heap by the fire. Furiosa smirks in satisfaction. Her guard spits a string of angry instructions, judging by the number of people who launch themselves at Max as he sits up. He kicks as many as he can but he's vastly outnumbered. They drag him out of the trunk, drop him to the floor, and then it's a rain of feet and fists, the grunts and thumps of a violent beating. 

The children whimper and hide themselves behind their mothers. It takes every ounce of self-discipline Furiosa has not to throw herself into the fray. She swallows down bile and makes herself watch. The acid churns inside her.

“Go. Move. Go,” says the gunman. Others have joined him, equally armed. They're led away from the fire, away from Max. Furiosa strains her ears but she doesn't hear the last hit.

Furiosa keeps surreptitious track of the layout of the camp, the number of guards she can see versus the number of civilians, and the best routes back to the ute – even if the engine never runs again, she has no intention of leaving without her arm.

Out of the darkness forms a metal cage with a heavy door hanging open. “In. In,” grunts the leader. He prods the middle of her back with his gun. Fists clenched bloodless, Furiosa steps gingerly through the entrance, bracing for an attack from the shadows. 

Nothing happens. The cage appears empty. 

“In. In.” The trailer people stumble in behind Furiosa. One of the old women turns and spits at the leader. His pistol smacks across her face before Furiosa can do more than flinch forward. The woman drops like a stone. With a sharp clang, the heavy door swings shut.

No one moves until the armed raiders have gone.

After checking she's still alive, Furiosa lets the others fuss around their injured kin. Instead, she paces the length and width of the cage, feeling its construction, inspecting the water trough and an empty bucket, checking for any weak points or advantages. None present themselves immediately, but it's better than waiting for Max – if Max should ever come. 

“Someone's coming,” whispers the old man. They shuffle back, away from the door, dragging the bleeding old woman with them. Furiosa puts herself casually in between, shawl still over her head but legs thrumming with banked violence. 

The heavy door swings open. A body is thrown in. The door slams shut. 

Furiosa is on her knees in a heartbeat, hauling the unconscious man onto his back. It is Max – but he is almost unrecognisable for the blood smeared over his face. 

“Help me,” Furiosa says. The women are clustered around the spitter, but the old man and the pregnant teen scuttle to Max's arms, lifting up while Furiosa takes his legs. Together, they get him to the water trough.

“Is he alive?” the girl asks, panting, one hand pressed against the swell of her belly. Furiosa doesn't answer. The water tastes stale but clean; she soaks her shawl in it, then begins to clean Max up with gentle fingers, probing for broken bones under bruised flesh. Her two helpers sit by her, wrestling off his leather jacket when she asks, holding his shirt up when she needs to inspect his chest. He's alive, yes, somehow; Max's peculiar brand of luck once again shielding him against a barrage of booted feet and thumping fists. 

Once the shawl is thick with blood but Max is clean of it, Furiosa turns him sideways in case he needs to vomit, propping his head on her leg for a softer cushion than the floor. She keeps her hand on his back where she can feel both his heartbeat and his breathing. It takes the rest of the night for the anxiety to shudder out of her in quiet tremors. 

Max wakes under the sickly grey light before dawn: a startled jerk followed by a pained groan. 

“It's okay, it's okay,” Furiosa murmurs. Her fingers card through his hair, skirting the snake-egg on his forehead. Max blinks a bleary eye open; the other is swollen shut, next to a nose that is definitely more crooked than before. 

“... What?” he croaks.

“What do you last remember?”

Max thinks for a long moment, forehead knitted with concentration. “... Dag broke her ankle?”

Furiosa closes her eyes, swallows thick and bitter. That was nearly a month ago. They stole a month of memories out of his head, good memories, happy memories of soft mornings and cosy nights. Max has so few of them, to lose any is a travesty. Furiosa grits her teeth and knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that she is going to bleed them dry for this. 

“We've been captured. I think they're traders or slavers,” Furiosa murmurs. “You made a good impression.” He twitches a smile at her. 

A shadow blocks the light. “You're awake,” the pregnant girl chirps. Max squints at her, then flinches so violently his head thumps into Furiosa's stomach. 

“No, it's okay, it's okay – Max.” Furiosa rests her hand on his cheek, turns him to look at her. His eyes skitter sideways, drawn magnetically to the swollen belly of the girl. “It's not Angharad. Max. It's not her.” Between the lump on his head and Max's own demons, she knows he's not really hearing her; he pants fast and hard, skin gone white, pulse thumping visibly in his neck. Furiosa jerks her head at the girl to leave. “Max. It's okay. Max.”

How long she sits like that – holding Max's gaze steady, stroking her hand over his cheek, breathing deliberately long and slow for him to sync to – she can't tell. Eventually he raises one hand and folds it over the meat of her arm, and she knows he's back with her. 

He focuses in on his arm. “My jacket?” 

“Here.” Furiosa tugs out from behind her where she had been using it as a cushion for her back against the solid water trough. 

Max holds the jacket close. “Up,” he grunts. 

It's not a good idea – between the egg on his head and bruised, maybe cracked, ribs – but Furiosa would be the same in his position. She eases him up, ignoring his bitten-off moans and the sweat that beads on his skin. Then, before he asks, she takes the jacket and places it over his shoulders like a cape. 

She squats next to him. “I'm going to take a look around,” she says. “There are several people in here with us. Some old women, a pregnant girl, a baby. You don't know any of them. Okay? Say it.”

“I don't know any of them,” he parrots in a low voice. He looks like he might be sick. 

The light of day doesn't make their situation any better. The cage is made from large chunks of rusted car parts welded together. It's only a little taller than Furiosa, and bare but for the water trough by Max, and the empty bucket for the lav. The children could fit through the holes in the walls, but she immediately dismisses it as pointless; the oldest is maybe six years old, and they're all of them thin and weak. Digging underneath the bars might work – except it would take a long time to do by hand, long enough to attract attention. 

After a casual circumference, Furiosa inspects the cage door. The lock is solid – nigh unbreakable without some heavy tools. The bars are strong. But, like a car, the weakest part is a part that moves. Furiosa eyes the hinges.

“Look,” the old man croaks suddenly. Furiosa follows the line of his finger. Two of the raiders are approaching, one wielding a rifle, the other carrying a large pot. The smell reaches them before he does: food of some kind, a little meaty and a little spicy. Furiosa can almost hear the bellies rumbling behind her. 

“Here,” the pregnant girl says, and tosses a shawl over Furiosa's head. 

The two men stand at the cage door. “Back,” says the armed one, raising his gun in warning. Furiosa obediently backs up, keeping herself between the rifle and the girl. The door swings open; her eyes are drawn to the hinges, and an idea forms in her mind. 

The pot-holder steps over the threshhold. Up close, he's recognisable: the man from yesterday, who flicked bullet casings at Furiosa, who Max kicked in the face. His nose is mashed up between two black eyes. He glares sourly at Furiosa. The pot he places on the ground, and then he backs out. The door clangs shut. 

“Is it food?” one of the mothers asks. She has the baby latched on to her breast, but it doesn't look like much milk is coming out. 

Furiosa waits until the two raiders have disappeared from view before she approaches the pot. It smells good. She sticks her finger in to taste it. 

“It's food,” she says. Their captors obviously don't want them to starve. Either they are going to be sold – or eaten. 

Furiosa doesn't share this thought.

She brings the pot to the group sat clustered around the old woman who spat the night before. Her face is a ghastly array of colourful bruises, lopsided with swelling, a great gash over her cheek where her weathered skin has split. But she's awake, at least, and swallows a mouthful of the soup when it's offered. The pot makes its way around the group until there's a thumb's-width left. 

Max is dozing when Furiosa kneels opposite him. His eyelids are thin slits, the pupil a flicker of petrol blue in a glaze of white. “There's food,” Furiosa says. He watches as Furiosa drinks two healthy gulps and smacks her lips. When she brings the pot to his mouth, he downs the dregs, chomping something crunchy between his teeth. 

“Don't want us dead,” he says, and shares a look with Furiosa. 

“I can dismantle the door,” she says quietly. “It might take a couple of nights.” At his questioning grunt, she lifts her shirt enough to reveal the hilt of her knife tucked out of view. Max brushes his fingers over it and nods. 

The day passes in a blur of hot wind and the anxious tedium of imprisonment. Nothing much appears to happen in the raider's camp, though Furiosa watches intensely. While the children flop around, listless from heat exposure, some of the women – the old ones in particular – prowl the cage edges, muttering darkly to each other. Furiosa can relate: her eyes flicker to the hinges of the door with every second breath. Her fingers twitch, running over the thick knife handle tucked under her shirt. But mostly she waits, in the sure knowledge that she'll need later what rest she can bank now.

Max dozes on her shoulder as his body mends. He flinches awake repeatedly, gasping for breath, fists clenched and ready to fight. The others keep away, for which Furiosa is grateful. She soothes Max down, each time, from his heart-hammering terror. Each time, he offers her a wincing smile with his split lip and slips back into troubled sleep. 

Furiosa toys with the knife hilt and daydreams of violence. 

At dusk, the old man shuffles next to her. “Someone's coming,” he says. “Look.”

Several someones – all armed, and stomping over sand mounds towards the cage. Furiosa nudges Max awake and stands. The women and children cluster in the centre of the cage, watching with wary eyes. 

The lock clunks and the door swings inwards. Three of the armed men enter. They survey their captives. “Choose one,” the middle figure intones. 

“For what?” Furiosa snaps back. The women behind her whisper, too quiet for her to hear, but she knows what they're thinking because she's thinking it too.

“One. Choose.”

“Tell us what for.”

The speaker scowls and gestures with his pistol. “You choose or we choose,” he snarls. 

“I'll go,” Max speaks from the back of the cage. Furiosa doesn't take her eyes off the armed men, though she dearly wants to glare at Max. 

“You're injured,” she argues.

“Had worse. Besides –” He limps forward to stand next to her, hunched around his bruised ribs and his nose scabbed with dried blood. “Someone needs to be here.” He gives her a blank look, completely inscrutable, and she knows exactly what he means, and he's right too. Closing her eyes, Furiosa steels herself and nods. 

She makes herself watch as he hobbles out the exit, armed raiders flanking him. He doesn't look back.

It is Furiosa who paces the perimeter of the cage as the sun slowly bleeds into the horizon. She stops only at the sight of a dozen cars coming in from the north. They join the circle made by the cars already parked, the last screaming in on a handbrake turn just outside the cage, kicking up a cloud of dust and fumes. The women cough and choke and spit curses at the driver as he jumps out of the car with a spiteful grin on his face. Glaring through streaming eyes, Furiosa adds him to her mental tally of soon-to-be corpses. 

It seems to be some kind of reunion, judging by the cries of welcome the newcomers receive. More captives are thrown into the cage – a family of three generations, embraced into the fold by the women already there. The raiders stand outside the cage, cackling to each other in their tongue, pointing and laughing at the people they've caught before drifting away. 

“My husband,” sobs the young woman with twins nestled in the crook of each arm. “They took my husband.” 

Furiosa begins to get an inkling when a circle of little fires are lit. The heat is a welcome relief after the cold desert night has set in, but it's definitely not for their comfort. Her sinking feeling of dread intensifies as more and more of the raiders line the invisible edge of the fire-drawn circle. 

Finally there's movement. From the far side opposite the cage, two figures are led through the jeering audience. Max is easy to spot by his heavy limp; from the renewed crying of the twins' mother, Furiosa can guess the identity of his companion. In the red firelight it doesn't look like Max has been beaten again. He's none the wiser, though, stood in that loose fighter's stance in preparation for attack. 

The gibberish the lead raider spouts has cheers and shouts erupting from the crowd. It all becomes frighteningly obvious when several men step into the circle wielding whips and clubs and knuckledusters. A good old-fashioned feral-baiting, like Joe used to host at Citadel before Furiosa ripped his jaw off. 

At the blast of a carhorn, the sport commences. 

They take it slow and steady, for a beatdown, the attackers approaching in threes or fours rather than all at once. Max manages to tackle one between flashes of the whip, has him on the ground and is pounding fists into his face. Someone else gets him in a chokehold with a club and hauls him off. Furiosa burns with the need to be there next to him. She would slide her knife in under those ribs so deep it would come out the other side. 

The knife. 

The knife! 

She could kick herself for being distracted. Now is the perfect chance to get a closer look at those hinges, get started on dismantling them. 

Max is currently circling a raider. His knuckles gleam chrome in the firelight. 

Furiosa tears herself away. She tunes out the horrified gasps, the delighted cheering, the crack of the whip and the thwack and thud of bodily impacts. Her attention narrows to the hinges of the cage door, and the knife in her hand, and nothing else. 

An eternity later, or so it seems, when she has half-jimmied the bottom hinge out, the old man shuffles over. “They're bringing your man,” he murmurs. 

Furiosa stuffs the knife away and scurries backwards to stand with the other women. Her breath sticks when the raiders open the door, but the hinge holds. They throw in the father of the twins, and then Max. Neither man utters a sound at the crash landing. 

A quick check reveals the crowd has gone, the cage once more alone against the frigid night wind. The fires are all but dead.

While the others gather around the other man, Furiosa kneels by Max. His leather jacket is shredded all across his back and shoulders from whiplashes. There are slices in his scalp and neck where they caught. There's blood everywhere, soaking his shirt and dripping into the dust. Furiosa doesn't want to move him for fear of causing more harm but – she needs to see the damage to his front. 

He comes to on a scream of agony when she rolls him over. The others flinch and scuttle back. “Max! Max, it's okay!” Furiosa tries, but the pain takes him under just as quickly. It's a relief.

His front is such a mess Furiosa is almost sick with it. 

More lacerations from the whip, cut straight through his shirt without the leather jacket to protect him. His eyes are swollen completely shut, lip split again, an eyebrow to match. There's a second lump on his forehead to match the first, both of them colouring up vivid blue. The fingers of his left hand are all crooked, and his forearm has a distinct bump in the middle suggesting a break. 

There's so much damage Furiosa doesn't know where to begin. But then the old man appears at her side, a wet cloth in his hand – his own shirt, she realises – and so she takes a deep breath, and thinks about Max like a rig. Start at the most urgent repair and work from there. 

She barely notices the cold as deep night fades into a bitter dawn. Furiosa's existence narrows to a finite set of actions: wipe away the blood, apply pressure until it stops leaking, wrap bandages around every wound possible, put a sling on his arm and hope for the best. 

It's not until she can see the twins' father cradled in his wife's arms as he is tended that she realises she wasted the night when she should have been attacking the hinges. Cursing to herself, she leaves Max under the old man's watch and takes out her knife. There are a couple of hours before the camp rises. 

Mid-morning, broken-nose raider returns with another pot of soup, grinning wickedly at the sight of Max slumped unconscious against Furiosa. She glowers at him but otherwise doesn't move. The pregnant girl takes the pot on its round while Furiosa tries to wake Max. He's been unconscious for a long time and she's worried, though she has pushed it deep down, compartmentalising so that she can focus. Reluctantly he wakes, groggy and confused; he doesn't really see Furiosa leaning into his face to hold the pot up to his mouth. He flinches at the press of metal on his split lip. Most of his portion dribbles down his chin before Furiosa realises that he can't open his jaw at all. 

“He needs to eat,” the old man murmurs. Furiosa nods, blinking back helpless tears; there are no straws casually lying around, no spoons welded into the cage frame. “You could –” The old man taps his lips, then gestures at Max. 

“Might work,” Furiosa concedes. She takes a mouthful of soup, cups her hand gently to Max's cheek so she can tug apart his lips with her thumb, and lets the soup stream from her to him. He swallows, choking a little, and when she pulls back he is looking at her with one mostly-closed eye. Twice more she feeds him this way, and keeps the chunky dregs for herself. 

Furiosa knows that Max's tattoo says he's a fast healer, but she's never had a chance to observe the full extent of that til now, when he rouses himself mid-afternoon while she's swatting flies from the rich blood clotted on his clothing. 

“...sa?” he hisses between his teeth. 

“Hey,” she says, soft. “Don't talk. I think your jaw is dislocated.” He grunts to that and Furiosa could cry with relief. She's not alone. 

“Hngh?” This is accompanied by a nod to the exit.

“I've nearly done one hinge,” she says, and refuses to feel any guilt that she hasn't done more. “I think I can get them both finished tonight.” 

“Hmm.”

It's too much to hope for that the raiders will leave them be. At dusk, once again the group of armed men enter the cage. “Choose two,” says the middle one.

“Me,” Furiosa says, rising to her feet. She is of a height as the lead raider, and nearly as broad.

“Woman no. Woman sell. Good uses.” He leers at her with a mouth of half-broken teeth. Furiosa can perfectly visualise breaking the other half. “Choose two.” He points to the five males in the cage: the husband, the old man, two children and Max. 

Furiosa's heart splits in two before Max even moves. He struggles to his feet, using the cage bars for leverage, and meets her stricken face with his one good eye. 

“Good. One more.”

The silence from the twins' father is deafening. 

“I'll go,” croaks the old man. He is only slightly more steady than Max on his feet, but together they shuffle through the exit with their armed guard. Furiosa's hand clenches and unclenches, futile by her side. 

The fires burn bright and hot again. Max and the old man are led to the centre of the ring where they stand on wobbly legs. Furiosa wastes no time. She attacks the bottom hinge as the first cheers erupt, and doesn't stop no matter how awful the noises.

“Hey,” a voice cuts into her blind concentration. Furiosa pinwheels round with the knife clutched in her sweaty hand. It's the pregnant girl. There are thick tear tracks carved through the dirt on her cheeks. “They're coming.”

The door swings in – the hinges squeak but hold.

One body is dumped on the floor.

Furiosa's stomach drops. The smell of blood clots at the back of her throat.

It's Max. There's nothing left of his shirt. His jacket is reduced to a scrap of leather twisted over his right shoulder. His trousers stick in wet patches to his legs. He isn't moving.

Furiosa doesn't let herself think about the fate of the missing old man. Instead, she starts the familiar tasks, cleaning up the blood and binding wounds. The others offer their shirts for bandages. Max remains unconscious, and just as well. 

When she props him up against the cage bars so he doesn't drown in blood, there's a rattle in his chest. Furiosa wipes blood, sweat and grime from Max's swollen eyes and feels the fury ignite in her chest.

“Keep watching him,” she growls at the pregnant girl, shoving the wet shirt into her hands.

She attacks the final hinge with savage intensity. They are getting out tonight. She will gut every last one of these raiders. 

Before dawn the hinge gives. The women gather next to Furiosa, bracing the weight of the heavy metal. As one they lift and jiggle it until the door comes free. Then they lower it to the ground, quiet as the desert wind. 

The open exit calls. Furiosa steps over the threshhold, hardly daring to breathe as she hunkers low, ears straining, knife clenched in her hand. Not a sound. 

She pokes her head back through the hole. The women stand in a cluster, children gathered close. Max still lies limp against the bars. Furiosa points to him. “Bring him and follow me,” she says.

The ute engine failed, and is on the other side of the camp anyway, so instead Furiosa chooses one of the raider's rigs nearby: a big beast with enough space for the many she's bringing.

There are two raiders asleep in the truck bed. She slits their throats before either one wakes. With help, she hauls the bodies out and dumps them to one side. The old women hoist themselves in, cushioning Max as he's passed up. His head lolls while they settle him. For a second Furiosa thinks he's dead, and the chill terror of it seizes her innards. 

“He's okay,” the pregnant girl murmurs, placing a careful hand on her shoulder. Furiosa takes a shuddering breath. He could be dead, should be dead, if it weren't for the strange luck that has always haunted him. The raiders had done their worst and Max was still alive – for now.

It's this thought that spurs Furiosa to action. She turns to her fellow prisoners. “Can any of you drive?” she asks.

“I can,” says the old woman with the gash in her cheek. 

“Get in the car.”

“Where are you going?” the pregnant girl asks. 

Furiosa hefts the knife gleaming dully with blood in the moonlight and doesn't answer.

It doesn't take long. She doesn't get them all – more than fifty raiders would be too much for her little knife, and dawn is fast approaching – but she slices the throats of the leader who drove her ute, and the vindictive one with the broken nose. She takes extra pleasure in the last one.

With a clutch of guns in her arms, Furiosa hurries back to the rig and climbs into the bed, perching between unconscious Max and the pregnant girl. The old woman drives discreetly. Furiosa checks her new weapons and lays them out ready. 

“Hngh.” 

Furiosa immediately glances down. A glimmer of an eye peers up at her. “Hey,” she whispers, and rests her hand on Max's forehead, glowing with heat. 

“... sa?”

“It's alright,” she says, and dredges up a smile for him. In the distance, engines growl to life. “Everything is alright.”


End file.
